A Christmas Surrender

My time is in short supply lately. We had three weeks of straight sickness that we're finally on the other side of (I hope!). My Magpie wanted All Mama, All the Time and Sassy was eager to grab any of the leftovers. Sleep has finally returned to most of our nights, and nothing could have made me happier.

It's been a little frustrating. I've been itching to write about so many things lately, but carving time out seems to be getting increasingly difficult. Jeff is home every day now, since his layoff in November. He is a homebody by nature, so he rarely goes out unless it's for a quick errand. It's even harder to grab writing time when he's home, for some reason. Perhaps I feel it's not as practical as other activities I could be doing (cleaning, laundry, diapers, cooking)? Perhaps I feel rude shutting the door to my computer space, leaving him with both kids? Perhaps I know my proclivity to irritation when interrupted and I don't want to start our days off poorly? I don't know. It seems to be an adjustment process, both of us here all day, every day, and fortunately, I think we're on the tail-end of that too. There's small stuff to tweak and that's about it. Overall, the change has been very positive.

Maggie turns ONE! in less than a month. It was around this time that I had planned to secure a part-time freelance writing job at The Madison Roundabout, a monthly publication focused on entertainment and editorials. They've been advertising for a freelance writer & photographer with a few in-house hours to help with layout, probably right before print each month. I first saw the ad back in early summer, and I keep seeing it in the paper each time I pick it up. I wanted Maggie to be about a year old and a little less addicted to Mama and the nursies. I wanted her firmly established on solids and sippies and able to stay with Daddy for a few hours at a time. She's getting close.

But then in September, I got this instead.



Um, that wasn't in the plan.

On November 30th, our last day of insurance from Jeff's job, I had a quick ultrasound that showed a flippy floppy baby and a quick little heartbeat.



Looks like the Roundabout is out for awhile. Looks like life is going to get a lot harder, time is going to get a lot shorter, and sleep is going to run away with the spoon.

For those of you who might not know, successful conception and pregnancies have always been rather difficult around here. It took a long time to conceive at all, then I started losing babies after Sassy. First there was a 12-week missed miscarriage, then lots of positive pregnancy tests that ended a few days later, months and months of those. Then there was an infertility specialist and Clomid and twins that only held out a week. There was me not into the whole infertility routine - I said I wasn't hardcore enough for that - and then there was a brilliant nutritionist to whom I'm infinitely thankful. There were lots of supplements and diet changes and then there was the conception of my Magpie. There was worry, lots of worry, then there was a placental hemorrhage at 12 weeks and the ER and lots of unwanted interventions and the news I was miscarrying.

But I wasn't.

There was me on bedrest for four weeks, finally awakening to the intuitive connection I had with my baby inside. There was me learning to trust that, to consult that, and to communicate with a baby that was part of me and not at the same time.

There was a planned homebirth, finally decided at 32 weeks, for a baby with a beautiful and established head-down presentation. Then she flipped, 3 weeks before I was due. There was a decision to be made, and the intuition I'd learned to trust before...the communication patterns we built during the Big Scare at 12 weeks, made the decision for me. I would trust the baby and her decision to flip, and I would trust my body to have her.

And then she was born, she was here, and it was beautiful! She was a gorgeous little baby and I was so happy to have had her at home, to have had her without a c-section, but most importantly, to have had her at all.



And I decided I didn't care if I had any more. I could be done and be fine. This was a first!

Imagine my surprise when after all that trying, all those losses, all that heartache and mindtrip (infertility is the ultimate in mindtrips, what with all the "positive thinking will get you where you need to be," but I'll choose not to digress this time), here we were with an unplanned pregnancy.

To boot, we had just moved and I had so many plans for improving and working our little homestead next year. I soothed myself all summer last year by telling myself I could be super productive this year, when Maggie started toddling. Just one year, I told myself. No big deal.

When I couldn't write as much as I wanted, I told myself: one year will make a big difference. When I ended up stuck in the chair nursing again I told myself: next year things will be different. Another sleepless night with a baby using me as a human pacifier all night? It's just a year, sleep is always hard for a year.

I'll admit my reaction wasn't ideal when I first took that test. For a few months, though I didn't speak my feelings much out loud (an old infertility mindtrip of JINX prevented that), on my good days I was ....indifferent....about adding another baby to our family so soon. On my bad days, I was scared, annoyed, even a little angry. The one that was missing was joy.

Next year was supposed to be my time. Finally. I was supposed to be able to work the land like I wanted to, and get that little part-time writing job outside the house. It was supposed to get easier, not harder!

But there are some things in life that you just have to accept. First of all, there's no way out of it. More importantly in this case, this little surprise of ours, way off the time plan we'd established, has the potential to bring so much joy - a lifetime of it. I know that I now can't imagine my life without Maggie. What parent can? And it's not just any baby, it's her.

I can't imagine my life without her shy little way of burying her head in my shoulder when people talk to her, while she still looks at them with a crooked smile. I can't imagine my life without her love of being hugged tightly and rocked back and forth, the way she just smiles and loves back. I can't imagine my life without her slobbery little open mouth on my cheek when I ask for kisses. Her particular nose and her particular hairline and her particular fingers and rolls and the little birthmark under her left thumb and the little knot on her right ear.

And I know we'll feel the same about the next baby.

I'm writing this today in lieu of so many other subjects I could have - and wanted to - write about, because today is about Christmas. Why?

Let me share another little secret of mine. Although I was raised in a Christian church, I never really felt the big significance around Christmas. Yes, it's the day Jesus was born, which is the best of all Bible stories for children. A little baby in a manger born in a barn with farm animals around? For a child, how does it get better than that?

But as I matured, I lost the magic around Christmas and I didn't get any real insight or significance from the actual birth of Christ. I mean, he was born, but he didn't accomplish much that day except journeying through the birth canal. I always saw the significance behind Good Friday and Easter. But Christmas was about family gatherings and pagaents (would I get to be Mary this year?) and remembering my parts for the bell choir and candlelight service and of course, presents.

And then a few years ago, I watched two movies about the nativity story that brought the events to life for me. Each year since, as the parent of young children, I've begun to relate more to Mary and Joseph as the focus of the lessons I learn at Christmas. And this year, I'm finding my own spiritual lesson of Christmas to be that of surrender. Jesus was quite the ill-timed baby, yet Mary embraced him. Joseph could have walked away, but he didn't. Here came a little baby that was about to make their lives in that culture very, very hard, and still he was embraced. Their timetable was surrendered.

I often think about that late third-trimester journey to Bethlehem when I'm tempted to bemoan my own pregnancy woes and discomforts. Surrender. Perspective and surrender.

It's so tempting for me - in all areas of my life - to think, as soon as xyz happens, then I can be happy. It's much harder for me to embrace the present for the joys it can hold.

When I think about surrendering my own timetable this Christmas - my own plans, my own body, my own bed and my right to a full night's sleep - I want to remember that every journey has its own purpose. I can stay in the journey and enjoy it for the unique joys that it brings, or I can keep waiting for the end of the road. How sad to miss everything along the way.

the log home

When we moved out here, we intended to build right away. We wanted a log home; well, technically we wanted a log-sided home. Is it the most "green" of all our options? No. But it was part of the package for us. We wanted the acreage and the log home on it. We love log homes - they bring many happy memories with them for both of us. We do a heck of a lot of other stuff to reduce our impact on the planet, and we wanted to give ourselves this one luxury.

But as these things go, giving ourselves a luxury every now and then doesn't mean we give in to our whims completely. We've been actively researching how to make our future log home as low-impact (and least costly) as possible.

So we decided on a few things. First, we're going to make it a stick-built home with log siding. We have newer-growth edge woods (7.5 acres of them) that have been untended for a very long time. Jeff is currently cutting down our red cedars - actually in the juniper family - to use as our siding. Red cedars are what they call "pioneer" trees, meaning they are one of the first to establish themselves on a field that is left untended. They're very prominent in new-growth woods like ours. As the hardwood trees start to grow up around them, they eventually shade out and kill off these juniper pioneers.

Our woods could use some culling, for certain, and the red cedars are a great option since they will eventually die out anyway (in fact most are already dead except their very tops, 20 feet up), and since they regrow so quickly. As luck would have it, they are also one of the best trees to use for a log home since they are so bug resistant.

We are also building a two-story home with a small (less than 1200 square foot) footprint. The bottom story, which will house our bedrooms, will be underground with a walkout into our woods. We're having a standard concrete basement poured, then we'll finish it with three bedrooms and a small living area with a woodstove that looks out into our woods.

It can get very hot in our area during the summer, and we usually end up running the air conditioner for at least two months each year, for both temperature and air quality. Having our sleeping areas underground should eliminate the need to run our air conditioner, except maybe a week or two in mid-August when the tomatoes are ready to can. The prospect of canning in 95 degree heat with 70% humidity makes canning not happen.

We're using as many free and recycled items as possible to finish the interior of the house. And we're situating the house to take advantage of the solar gain in the winter.

We're very excited about our plans, and the fact that we will one day be living in our log home on our land, just like we intended from the beginning. We think we have it figured out financially so that we won't have to borrow any money to complete the house.

And the best part?

We're starting on the basement next month! By the end of winter, we should have the entire basement poured and weatherproofed. We might choose to finish it and live in it before the rest of the home goes up. We could then sell our mobile and have that cash to use for the framing and/or the roof.

This is a huge step for us, and it definitely keeps me going on these endless cold, cloudy days. :-)

And now, a quick plug for my other blog, Supper In Seconds. If you've never been there, it's a recipe blog I started a couple years ago dedicated to scratch cooking that takes 15 minutes or less hands-on time.

We eat little to no processed food here. I am extremely sensitive to chemicals (another bonus on using our own logs for our own home), to the point where I was on medication for nearly 15 years to deal with my chemical sensitivities. I stopped taking medication 5 years ago, and have learned a lot about keeping myself and my family fed without convenience foods.

I started documenting my favorite quick recipes, because if you don't have the sensitivities I do, and you can eat convenience foods, I suspect most of you probably eat more of them than you want to simply because they are quick to prepare.

Supper In Seconds was intended to offer some alternatives.

I've had some camera issues for several months, so the blog is very deficient in pictures for a food blog! However, my dear husband just fixed those camera issues for me as my Christmas gift, so I can now start including pics of the finished recipes too.

In the future, you can access it on the right sidebar of this blog. I hope you enjoy it too!

And finally, on to some recent photos:

We lost our Christmas stockings in the move somehow, so I sewed some more & Sassy and I decorated them tonight. She decorated the one with the Christmas tree.



With Jeff home full-time now, finding a quiet space to do some schoolwork in our very small house - or any non-distracted work - is very hard for Sassy. I carved her out a little spot today.



She, in turn, immediately set to work choosing a tablecloth for the table an setting up her desk.



And lastly, yes it's true we have no TV input. That's right. No cable. No satellite. No network news. However, aside from Hulu, entertainment still abounds, no worries. For example, just last week I spent 30 minutes watching and documenting...

The Death of The Fly, starring The Tiny Spider One-Fourth Its Size

the best things in life are free

Happy Black Friday. Or Buy Nothing Day, if you prefer. It's just another day to me this year, which hopefully does end up being a happy one...we'll see how it unfolds.

The most amazing thing has happened for us this year. We have been assaulted with so few Black Friday advertisements I could count them on one hand. This is a stark contrast from years past, where the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving were filled with a growing frenzy of marketing so that as we got closer and closer to Thanksgiving we were Thankful, sure, but we were more aware of the deals to be had the next morning and more aware of the things we did not have than of the things we did. What a lovely way to undermine a holiday that - despite its sordid roots - should be a celebration of what we do have and the bountiful harvest that has been provided to us yet another year.

See, we ditched our TV when we moved here. I never realized just how much the TV was infiltrating our lives until we actually escaped the Black Friday assault without it. We also don't subscribe to the local paper, so we don't receive advertisements in the mail. And to top it off, we're in the middle of the country, and the nearest chain stores are 30+ miles away, so we don't even drive by a store nine days out of ten.

I can't explain how much happier this Thanksgiving has felt without knowing which widgets were on sale at which Super Widget Store. Last year at this time, I was almost 8 months pregnant, and I don't know about everyone else, but when I'm pregnant and I hear a terrible story about some other pregnant woman, it really sticks with me. Last year, I was horrified by the Wal-Mart trampling of 2008. One Wal-Mart worker died when shoppers busted down the doors at 4:55 a.m. The shoppers trampled the worker to death, and trampled a woman who was 8 months pregnant. Can you imagine? Can you even imagine wanting a widget at a Low Price so badly that you don't stop to help up a woman about to give birth?

The story got worse. Apparently, Wal-Mart locked the doors again while they waited for the police and a coroner to come, but they let the shoppers already inside finish their shopping, wait in line, and pay. Can you imagine being the cashier ringing these people out while your co-worker they just killed lays dead on the floor by the entrance?

Then, after the last shopper bought the last Low Low Price widget, they finally shut the store. For a couple hours. To clean up the blood. And they made the workers stand around waiting until they could open again.

I have never heard a more disgusting story of greed in my entire life. And the thing is, this greed? This greed was created. This frenzy was engineered, day by day, building, shoving anticipation higher higher until the tension was so tight, you could shove down glass doors with it.

It was then that I officially banned Wal-Mart, though I'd been unofficially banning them for years.

But without Wal-Mart, there's still Target, still Kohl's, still Macy's. There's lots of opportunities to bemoan our have-nots and forget our blessings. There's tons of chances to turn a day of thanksgiving into a day of preparation for getting more.

So as I was heading to sleep last night, I was thinking about the difference between this year and last year. And I then realized that the best things in life really are free. You don't have to stand in line for them, don't have to pay interest on them, and you don't have to put them under a tree to focus that holiday on buying too.

What are the best things in life?

A baby's first word - "Mama"



The growth that happens in 7 years of marriage, after the expensive wedding



Grandma's china set, just my style



Grandpa's hand-carved animals becoming the nativity scene
Mary and Baby Jesus in clothespins



Handmade ornaments, and the Mommy-Sassy time spent creating them



Daddy's handmade gnome house



An apron worn by a six year old whenever she makes cookies with Mommy



A handmade pie plate that "made me think of you"



Friends' heartily recommended movies lent, not rented



Pottery given by the potter himself



Art



Why are these things the best things in life? Besides the obvious, there's the fact that yes, they are free, but they can't be replaced. They can't be bought. You can buy all the Low Low Price widgets you want, but you can't buy a baby's fierce love for her mama and you can't buy a big girl's true smile when you ask her if she'd like to do a project together. You can't buy love, so they say, and you can't buy creativity or family or security or contentment.

But you can work for it. Not by letting more of the world - our profit-driven world - in, but by keeping more out.

a mother's intuition

When I was three years old, I almost drowned. My mother and I were in Hawaii, where she was visiting her sister whose Marine husband had been stationed there. My mom and dad were having marital problems at the time - they separated shortly after we returned - so my dad wasn't with us.

I don't remember a lot of what happened, though I remember more than I ever thought a three-year-old could recall. Most of the memories are surely memories of memories though, since I think of the incident several times a year.

We had all gone out for a boat ride off the coast of Oahu. My uncle drove the boat, along with my mom, me, my aunt, and my grandparents. When we came back, we had to walk several hundred feet down a small bridge about the width of a sidewalk from the boat to the pier. I was given the job of carrying towels back to the pier.

My mom went to use the restroom. I think she must have had reason to believe someone else was watching me at the time, while that other person probably had reason to believe my mom was watching me. I'm not sure.

I do remember walking back to the boat by myself at some point. I remember leaning over off the little bridge to try to see a shark in the water. I remember falling into the water and trying to breathe, looking around, and being scared a shark would get me.

As the story goes, my mom was in the bathroom when a little voice inside her head panicked and said, "Where's Julie?"

She hurried out of the bathroom and called for me. She started to get more frantic, and then someone...her? my uncle?...saw my bathing suit bobbing up and down in the water. My uncle pulled me out, and being a trained Marine, gave me resuscitation and, well, saved my life.

I heard this story many times growing up, and I mixed it around with what I remembered, and learned it as a fact. It's part of my history, part of my family's history, like a folk tale you'd tell round the campfire on a fall night. My mom had an actual moment of mother's intuition. Pretty cool.

But then when I became a mother myself, I started to logic that moment away. She didn't have an a-ha moment so much as she realized she hadn't seen me in awhile. Her internal alarm clock rang because she had taken too long in the bathroom without me.

This is what my left brain decided. Until yesterday.

I put Maggie down on the floor yesterday after her nap. I did a quick floor scan to be sure nothing chokable was lying in her reach, then I went to load the washing machine in the next room.

As I was loading in the clothes, a little voice in my head said, "She has one of Sassy's dollhouse bowls in her mouth." What a specific thought! I tried to chuck it up as OCD and told myself if I did not get this laundry in, I would never be caught up.

I continued to load and the little voice said, "Stop it. Forget the laundry. Go make sure she doesn't have a little bowl in her mouth."

Fine. I put down the laundry. I figured I'd get everything done more quickly if I put the OCD to rest first.

I walked over to her, squeezed her little cheeks to look in her mouth, and darn it if she wasn't sucking on a little dollhouse bowl. A little wooden bowl about the diameter of a dime, but three times as thick. A little wooden bowl just asking to be a choke hazard.

The little dollhouse bowls went with Sassy today to live out the rest of their lives at Nana's house. And I got my childhood folktale back.

Hawaii, 1976







Aunt Jo



Mama

scavenger hunt, a reading game

Sassy has officially learned her one-syllable, short vowel sound words. On our word list, these come first, so we've been working our way through them, and she has done quite well.

Sassy often enjoys working through the lists more than reading herself to gain information. In fact, she usually resists reading something -- even if she knows the words -- to find out something she wants to know. She prefers that I just tell her. I suppose it's much quicker that way. ;-)

So to celebrate her success, and to prove the usefulness of being able to read some words all by herself, I decided to set up a reading game in the form of a scavenger hunt -- complete with a prize at the end.

I sent her outside for 20 minutes while I set up. When she came in, she was met with an empty table containing a milk jug, and a sign instructing her to Put Back the Milk. Each action produced a new sign, all short-vowel, one-syllable words.

We had: Lift the Doll, Skip to the Bunk Beds, and Put the Cats [on our mousepad] in the Tub, among others.

It all culminated in Lift the Big Rug where she found the prize: a dry-erase book from our local Amish store on how to draw farm animals. 20 minutes set-up time for me, a fun game for us both, an hour of drawing time for her. Sweet!

clothespin dolls and handmade books

Sassy learns a lot - some might argue most - of her "schooling" during freeplay time. Freeplay is just as it sounds, free. She is free to use the materials at her disposal to create or imagine or build or just play.

This week she chose to make clothespin dolls after we made them as a group project with our homeschooling co-op. She also wrote a book. Thing is, she doesn't really write yet, not in her own sentences and paragraphs anyway, so she drew pictures and made lines for words. It was very cute. The best parts were her own binding (using pipe cleaners) and her author bio on the back.

Here are some pictures. Enjoy!

Sassy's Author Bio



Clothespin Dolls



What do you do when you have awkward garbage to drag 500 feet to the road, you already hear the garbage truck on its way, but you can't leave the baby?
Load Her Up

little farmers

I meet a lot of new people these days. It's the nature of new resident life, I suppose, and I count myself lucky that I can play extrovert as well as I do now. It really helps in establishing yourself and your family more quickly.

Usually the first question I get when I meet someone local is, "Where are you from originally?"

The next is, "And what brought you out this way?"

Legitimate questions, but without an easy, pat answer.

I'm from NKY, sure, but the lot that I just moved from that held my little suburban home was a very different lot from the one I roamed as a child.

When my mom was alive, we lived on a little suburban lot, too. I thought it was fine. I had a best friend across the street, and I had many privileges that my children (and most suburban children) no longer have. I was allowed to roller skate and ride my bike all over the neighborhood. There really was no definitive line that I wasn't allowed to cross. We just sort of naturally stayed within about a half-mile radius of our homes. This was with no parental supervision, no cell phones. It was old-fashioned trust, I guess, that we would come home when we needed to, safe and sound, and if anything happened on the way, someone would alert our parents.

I was an explorer by nature, so my favorite place to go was the undeveloped section of our neighborhood where the woods seemed to me as a child to go on forever.

When my mom died, I moved to my grandparents' house for the rest of my childhood. They lived on five acres, barely out of the city (the C-O-V for you locals). My grandpa had been raised on a farm about 7 miles from where I am sitting this instant, and my grandma had been raised on a farm an hour south of our old home.

They were both dirt poor growing up, and their parents had many children to support. Their families did things "the old way" out of necessity as much as the cultural habit of the time. Many of these things carried on into my childhood.

My grandpa raised all kinds of food to supplement their incomes, which were sizeable enough to support us without the garden. But I saw my first example then of the old adage:

"You can take the boy outta the farm, but you can't take the farm outta the boy."

You get used to it, that kind of life. You get used to picking strawberries right out of the patch, picking your corn and shucking it before dinner, stringing the beans, climbing the apple and pear trees and snacking once you get up there.

It was then that I learned tomatoes were best off the vine, standing in the garden, eaten whole like an apple. The crowd I run with now already knows this, of course. But not everyone does. I want to be sure my children do.

We would sit on the back porch on clear, hot summer nights. My grandpa might have a baseball game playing on the radio. Nobody yelled out the window to "turn it down!" or, more accurately, nobody called the police to file a noise complaint. We had lots of elbow room around us. Nobody griped because nobody heard except the nocturnal animals roaming the woods behind us.

Many nights there was no baseball, there was just hot sticky sweat and crickets, loud, screaming at us sometimes. Other times, in the background, singing with the frogs. My grandpa would point out the tree frogs. He would imitate them, and sing along with them.

He had an old sleeping bag he loved and an old tree he loved to put it under. He would lay there with his eyes closed, not asleep, just being. Sometimes he would call to the birds and they would answer.

My grandma canned the extra fruits and vegetables. In our basement, we had shelves and shelves lined with canned goods. Some were probably so old they would have flunked any food safety test out there, but she'd open them up, give them the smell test, heat and serve. I was rarely belly sick at all.

My summers had the constant accompaniment of droning fans inside. We didn't have an air conditioner until I was nearly grown. To this day, I still am comforted by white noise...the louder, the better.

But at 35 years old, I found myself in the suburbs with 20 feet on either side between my neighbors and us -- neighbors who didn't understand the meaning of "make do" but sure did understand the meaning of "consume." We didn't buy new cars, we didn't buy big TVs, we often didn't even have cable. But the kicker? We didn't care about our lawn. We just didn't care. And we still don't.

We were out of our element, and we both felt it. So we bought land, and we moved into our element. I've never regretted the decision and I cannot imagine moving back to the suburbs now.

"You can take the girl outta the farm, but you can't take the farm outta the girl."

I've never been so confident and naive as to call myself a farmer, but I totally get this sentiment. I am a food gardener, and I am a rural person by nature. This nature is only more evident as I get older. I enjoy my land and the possibilities it represents, I enjoy my woods and the hours of exploration they provide, and I really, really enjoy my elbow room.

I could have stayed in the little house with the little lot. I could have become a different person, and put hours upon hours of energy into flowers and pretty grass. But that food garden always stole my energy. Each year it grew until I realized I wanted more -- more for me and more for my kids.



It didn't feel right to me that they weren't allowed out of our fenced third-acre, nor did it feel right that we weren't shucking corn and stringing beans before dinner.

So, I am asked: what brought you all the way out here?

There are a handful of things that I consider top priority in what I impart to my children. One of those is a true relationship with and understanding of their food. Food does not just come from a grocery store shelf. Someone's sweat and worry and fear and joy and soul gave you that food. To cherish it for the nutrition it gives to your body is expected. To waste it is unacceptable, and not because "there are starving kids in Africa."

I've seen firsthand the deleterious health effects of treating food like any other consumable, just another item to water down with chemicals and price high to line corporate pockets. And the political effects of turning over to profit-driven companies the control of the very substances we need to live cannot be understated.

I want my children to have an innate sense of the importance of their food and the power it represents. I want them to feel it without having to think it.

I want the farm to always be in my girls.

number sets

One of the concepts I wanted to introduce to Sassy this month was the idea of number sets and counting by twos.

Last month, we experimented with the concept of odd and even by walking up our long, 500-foot driveway to get the mail together. After a long rain, our driveway is filled with puddles here and there all the way to the road. I quickly told her on the way up one day which numbers between 1 and 10 were odd. Then I explained which ones were even.

"Oh!" she said. "So it's like every other number?"

"Yes," I said. "It's exactly that."

I then called out different numbers on the way back. If it was an even number, she was to do nothing unusual. But if it was an odd number, she was to jump into the rain puddle as hard as she could making as big a splash as possible.

She loved this game and begged to play it whenever she saw puddles.

I'm wondering now if the odd/even concept instigated a natural tendency for her to count by two, because she aced the game I made for her that was supposed to teach her how to do this.

Last week, she spent the day in the city with her Nana, and I sent her homeschooling activities with her for the day. One activity was a game of counting using a Hi-Ho Cherry-O game board but changing the play altogether. Here's our counting-in-sets game:

You Need:
A Hi-Ho Cherry-O game board
At least 20 cherries -- 40 is ideal, but not necessary
Two players

Game Play:
The parent (or teacher) asks the child to cover their eyes while the parent puts some cherries on one of the trees.

When the parent is finished, the child must guess how many cherries are on the tree before doing any counting. The parent should only allow about 5 seconds for the guess.

After the child ventures their guess, both players count the cherries together to see if the guess is correct.

If the child guesses correctly, the child gets the cherries. If not, they have to give the parent that amount of cherries (or however many they have if they don't have enough cherries yet).

The game continues until the child "swipes" all the cherries from the parent.

Around Round 3, the parent should begin to count the cherries by twos as they count together to see if the guess was correct.

Purpose

Many children naturally start to count in sets if they are encouraged to "guess" before they count. Orally counting by twos reinforces what they are likely already doing internally.

So how did Sassy do?

Nana said she counted by twos all the way to ten by herself, without any mistakes. Sassy then started counting by threes, so Nana rolled with it and Sassy figured out 3, 6, 9, then wasn't ready to go further. They both reported having a good time.

If you had all 40 cherries that came with the game, you could tweak these instructions to start introducing sets of ten. If you filled two trees completely plus one tree with 7 cherries, that's a nice visual for the number 27.

Along with our game, we read the book "One Hundred Hungry Ants" in our number sets week. In the book, 100 Hungry Ants separate into more and more sets to reach the picnic faster. It was perfect for this first grader.

Finally, in our freeplay, she's been working on building this week. Freeplay is always that -- free -- but she can only choose from the materials on hand. In August, she made me very proud by agreeing to make our toy collection totally plastic-free. She even agreed to redistribute her My Little Ponies, Barbies & horses. I am so touched by her empathy for her little sister and her deep desire to protect her, as that's the only reason she gave up her favorite toys. She knows plastic is made of chemicals and she knows her sister chews on everything.

So her freeplay "setup," as she calls it, was especially lovely without all that plastic. She made a pizza shop, with a little patio outside, a chicken that had to stay out because it was sick, the owners' house up on a hill above the shop, and a road that led there. I adore this child's creativity.

Here's the long view:



Then we have the dining room outside the kitchen (the kitchen was the photo up top):



Here's the outside patio with the umbrella table:



I asked her if the apple was part of the setup or just a snack.

She replied: "Oh, that was just my snack. But I got so caught up in my setup I forgot to eat it! That rarely happens to me."